6. Audience Theory

Audience is vital for any media texts.  If there is no audience the media text is meaningless.

Basic media theory:

Target Audience:

• Age
• Gender
• Price
• Social class - economic background
• Niche or Mass or Alternative
• Fragmented

Julian McDougal (2009) suggests that in the online age it is getting harder to conceive a media audience as a stable, identifiable group.  An audience can be described as a 'temporary collective' (McQuail 1972)

Popular was a negative thing - there was no credibility of artistic value.

• Historically (until the 19th century) the term 'popular' was a negative thing, with overtones of vulgarity and triviality.  Something not 'nice' or 'respectable'.
• In the modern world, the term means 'respectable' liked or at least encountered by many people.  It has also come to mean 'mass produced' i.e made for a mass of people.
• There is a down side to this of course, in that it can also be interpreted as 'commercial' or 'trashy'.
• This leads into further consideration which is the definition of 'popular culture' as 'low' culture, something not for the elite but for the 'common' people.
• Cultural value (high culture) has been traditionally associated with dominant or powerful groups - those who have appreciation of classical music, art, ballet opera and so on.
• 'Low' or popular culture is everything not approved of as 'high'. It is vulgar, common or 'easy'.

Another definition of popular is literally 'of the people' a kind of 'folk' culture and this is an interesting area, because it encompasses the idea of an 'alternative' culture which includes minority groups, perhaps with subversive values.

The 'Indie' music scene is an example of this.  So 'popular' culture can and sometimes does challenge the dominant culture power groups.

In terms of media there has always been high and low culture, however it has now become blurry about how it effects audience and how audience consume.

Rigid class structure.

Len Ang (1991) detailed that media producers have an imaginary entity in mind before the construction of a media product. "Audiences only exist as an imaginary entity, an abstraction, constructed from the vantage point of the institution, in the interest of the institution".

She also states that"audience is becoming an ever more multi-faced, fragmented and diversified repertoire of practices and experiences".